New Water Storage Tank - Cleaning

[Grant]

So I found someone on Craigslist who was selling plastic food grade water storage barrels. Mostly 55g, but he had some blue 30g and white 35g containers also. I met him yesterday and picked up two of the white 35g containers. These look like they've been stored outside his house maybe, or in a shed somewhere. The outsides are dirty. The insides look fairly clean, from what I could tell, but since I'm not willing to take any chances I'm curious what the best method would be to completely clean these out? It was dark by the time I got home so I haven't had a chance to really inspect them closely yet so hopefully they aren't too bad. For only $10 each I figured I'd take a chance and see if I could make them work.

Edit: I found several threads for cleaning out storage containers after a few uses, but nothing for cleaning a new storage container where the previous contents were unknown.

 

[coralreefer]

Depending what was in them to begin with I don't know if you could ever get them clean. There is no way to test for any metal leaching or anything like that.

Were they indeed used for food? What about soap and water- then rinse the devil out of them!?!

 

[ERIKATHORNBURG]

I personally don't know that I would trust them not knowing what was in them.


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[Ben]

If you could call the guy and find out if they held food or not. If only food you're probably safe pressure washing and then filling with water and bleach and let set for a week or so. Then rinse really well and refill and heavy dose of chlorine remover and let set for a couple more days. Then empty, rinse, and fill with RO. Test that your TDS is the same as when it went in. Let it sit full for a couple weeks and then test TDS again. If it's not changing then it's probably not contaminating your water.

 

[Grant]

@Ben Runnels wrote:

I believe they were just used once, and definitely something food related. This guy gets them when they're empty from the original company that used them and resells them. I'll have to take a closer look when I get home but originally I didn't think the whole top came off, just the small 4" cap, but it looks like I might have been wrong. If I can get the whole top off so that I can reach into them that'll make cleaning a lot easier. I figured I'd use bleach and water first, then rinse thoroughly, and let dry upside down for several days. The chlorine remover is definitely a good idea.

 

[reeferwanabe]

Water and vinegar is what I used for my old 55g blue barrels.

~Matt

 

[Guest]

You can use oxyclean to clean.


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[Grant]

@kuyatwo wrote:

Interesting... I'll look into that. Thanks. [smilie=smile.gif]

 

[Charlie]

@Ben Runnels wrote:

I do the same, only exception is I use chlorine instead of bleach. If it was food storage used, just fill it with RO and test TDS. Then if needed, you can add chlorine, bleach, oxyclean, whatever you want.

 

[Grant]

As far as what they were used for previously, the mystery has been solved:

[attachment=0]barrels.jpg[/attachment]

The tag was stuck to the bottom of the cap when I took it off. Apparently it's part of some soda of some sort. There's still a little bit of the brown liquid in the bottom of the barrels, so it doesn't appear they've ever been used for anything else. Anyone see anything here that I should worry about, assuming it gets a good thorough cleaning?

 

[Guest]

Chlorine is bleach.

Just run it under hot water is what I would do. If you really want it clean use oxyclean... Super clean use some
mixture of bleach and water then let it dry in the sun as sun breaks down chlorine. I have used old dr pepper syrup drums for ato and wc barrels before I just rinsed them under hot water


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[Grant]

@kuyatwo wrote:

Thanks, I thought I remembered reading on here that someone had used old Dr. Pepper drums. I guess it was you. [smilie=smile.gif]

 

[Grant]

An update (and a question) on this:

Both barrels have been cleaned really thoroughly. I finally got a TDS meter, and the water coming out of my RODI is at 0.00. The water that I put in the first barrel (that has the pump attached for mixing the saltwater) reads 0.02. I don't know where the .02 came from, but is that enough to worry about? Should I empty it and clean it again?

 

[Grant]

Anyone? I should also add that the pump I'm using was a used pump I bought that had previously been used in a sump for a return pump. I did soak it in vinegar for a few days and cleaned off as much as I could, but is it possible the extra numbers I'm seeing on the TDS came from that?

The 30g barrel I'm using is only have half full right now. I figure my two options are either fill it the rest of the way and just dilute whatever it is that's showing up and put the salt mix in, or use the water that's in it now along with vinegar or bleach or something to do another cleaning... again I'm just not sure of 0.02 is enough of anything to even worry about?

 

[hnurge]

wow, that's a precise TDS meeter. there are a few things that .02ppm extra could be really bad, but they seem unlikely. my bet is that is phosphate leaching since phosphoric acid was an ingredient - if you have a good phosphate test you could test and confirm. if you let them soak in the sun for a week that probably will come down.

 

[Grant]

@hnurge wrote:

Good idea. I'll test for phosphates tonight and see what I get... thanks!

 

[Grant]

@hnurge wrote:

Oh... oops. 2 ppm. Not 0.02 ppm. I got sidetracked between testing and posting and don't know what I was thinking there...

Anyway, the phosphate reading is 0 (with an API test kit.. so not sure if that qualifies as "good" or not). Anyone know of anything that I should worry about at 2 ppm?